


Cold Comfort

by Mottlemoth



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dirty Talk, Ice Play, M/M, Masturbation, PWP, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-18 22:29:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14861477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mottlemoth/pseuds/Mottlemoth
Summary: London is sweltering in a heatwave; Sherlock discovers a creative way to keep cool. Sadly the walls of Baker Street are thinner than he knows.





	Cold Comfort

It's summer - a long and stifling summer, the city simmering in a white heat that never breaks - and something is about to happen.

Sherlock can feel it in the air. It's like a low vibration, constant, thrumming somewhere beneath the haze. He can feel it coming closer. The days are hot and fussy and frustrating, and barely seem to be passing at all - but something of depth and magnitude is on its way.

Outside the safe walls of Baker Street, the ordinary people are surrendering more and more of their skin to the sun. They all seem restless and exhausted. They're gazing at each other with a strangely smoky understanding, and the tube carriages are full of people lying back slightly, fanning themselves with a hand, their eyes soft and unfocused. In the parks, people lie in the grass on blankets together, buttons undone in sleepy desperation. At night, the windows along Baker Street are all open. Drapes flutter through them, drawing in deep breaths of the night air. Sherlock can feel his own thoughts unwinding by the day. They're growing thick and molten, warped out of shape by the heat.

Nothing's getting done.

Even the crime rate has swooned. Criminals simply lie in the streets, sweating in submission, as police officers lie next to them and pant. Sherlock imagines Lestrade has taken to iced macchiatos and shorts by now. Mrs Hudson mentions that it's hot on average 6.2 times per day; fans are revolving slowly in every room.

Sherlock's brain is revolving with them - humming, flickering softly, side-to-side with no discernible end.

Everything is simply waiting.

 

* * *

 

Halfway through July, Sherlock discovers that ice water is no longer just refreshing.

The sharpness of it, the clarity - the odd drip of cold on his shirt, chilling the skin beneath - it's satisfying in a way that nothing else seems to be. It's almost spiritual. The faint freeze through his mouth, over his tongue and down into his throat, is a breath of relief after long weeks of no relief, and the act of drinking starts to become a comfort. Sherlock takes his glass each time to a quiet corner chair and sips it, knees to his chest, trying to ignore the feeling of his shirt sticking to his back. The urge to tip the water cleanly over his head is just as hard to ignore. He imagines it would make him gasp.

He starts placing a little on his wrists, just to experience it - just to watch and feel the drops idling their way along his veins, slipping beneath the white cotton of his sleeve.

 

* * *

 

August now, and the heat isn't finished.

Bottles of water appear in the freezer. They're meant for drinking, and the system is this: fill halfway from the tap, place sideways in the freezer, return in four to five hours and add more water to the ice, drink and then replace. It's a good system. John explains that he learned it at university. Sherlock finds that having eight bottles between the two of them provides the most efficient cycle for rotation, with no protracted waiting periods.

He also finds that they feel comforting against his neck.

'Comforting' perhaps isn't the right word.

The feeling makes his eyes close at once; it draws air inside his lungs. His shoulders rise into the sensation of their own volition, and the prickles of cold that slowly seek beneath his skin are... stirring. Pleasurable. Placed against his chest, the sharpness is muffled by fabric: a softer feeling, though just as soothing - unless he brushes his nipples by accident. Soon, it's rarely accidental.

He starts nervously lifting his shirt to run the bottles across his stomach, shivering with the feeling. They leave his skin wet and red, his muscles trembling, his heart singing. He starts imagining what cold wet fabric would feel like on his skin, clinging to his body, icy and tight, and he imagines flooding the material now and then with fresh cold water, writhing with the surge of relief. He daydreams about pools, the surface scattered with ice cubes - gathering them in both his hands, pushing them over his chest and his shoulders and his neck as they escape between his fingers. He wants to float in cold water as it thrills him.

One night, too hot to sleep, Sherlock steals down to the kitchen.

He retrieves a bottle from the freezer. It feels unsettling, choosing which one - all eight arranged together neatly in a line, next to John's boxes of supermarket ice lollies. Sherlock thought about them, blushing, but concluded that 'sticky' is distressing.

It's not sticky he wants.

It's cold.

He fills the bottle nervously from the tap, aware of his fingers shaking in the darkness. He then takes it with him back upstairs.

He walks with it casually, as if he merely wants to drink it - prepared to explain that if questioned. The back of his mind asks him who he expects to jump out to question him. It's the hour between one and two o'clock in the morning, when these feelings usually come upon him, and the house is silent. John's door is closed as he passes. Sherlock is alone; what he does in his solitude is his own business.

Lying down in the dark, still wearing his pyjamas, he simply holds the bottle for a while. He rests it on his stomach, waiting. As he realises he's inadvertently heating it with his palms, Sherlock shakes and breathes and shuts his eyes.

He undresses quickly, wriggling out of the thin pale blue cottons. He leaves them tangled amongst the sheets around him, and already it leaves him feeling debauched - lying here naked, his clothes astray, breathing timidly in the darkness.

The bottle waits for him on the bedside.

Sherlock gazes at it for a moment, feeling his body thrum. It's wicked, he knows.

But that's rather the point. 

He reaches for the bottle. He wishes his hand wouldn't tremble. He brings the cold plastic to his neck first, comforting, familiar, and listens with his fingertips to his own frightened pulse as he lets the feeling soften beneath his skin. When he can breathe again, he moves on.

Chest - his heart jumping, his muscles tightening at the wet slide of cold and round and smooth across his skin. The sensation is so sharp against his nipples that it hurts, and he jerks with it gently, stifling the sound. He dabs the cold water from the ridges of the bottle with his fingertips instead, stroking the wetness across his nipples, and his teeth dig into his lip at once. He arches into his own touch, panting. _Yes._ The sheets beneath him are damp with sweat, hitched and twisted by the motions of his body already. He lets them twist. He likes it - he feels wicked, stirring in the dark as pleasure courses through his skin. Rolling the bottle over his stomach makes him want to sob, shaking now, and for a long time he teases himself with it. He imagines a voice that likes to tease him too, soft thrills cascading through his senses as he listens. _No, not yet. You can't have that yet. Show me how much you want it, and I might just let you._

His own whimpers are exciting him.

"Please," he breathes to the voice, shivering. "Please, please..."

Frightened, desperate, he triangles his knees against the bed - then lets his thighs fall gently apart. The feeling of opening his legs, even for himself, is so evocative that he moans. Panting, he slides the bottle downwards.

Rolling it along his inner thighs prompts an apocalypse of the senses.

The rest is messy and wild: pressing the cold where it feels good - _everywhere_ it feels good; loosening the lid, wetting his shaking hands, then pushing the wetness where his own body burns with heat; shivering and gasping as he imagines the voice telling him he's good, good to whimper like that, good to spread his pretty legs for more, good to show just how shameless he is. At last, the bottle has consumed enough of his heat for a rounded spike of wet ice to come loose inside. Retrieving it necessitates pouring the rest of the liquid out, dripping over his stomach and the desperate strain of his cock - rolling down onto his sheets, the voice breathing in his mind that he's _such_ a good boy to make a mess - and it's almost enough. Almost.

As he lays the freezing wet length of ice against the underside of his cock, Sherlock's world nearly ends. The voice breathes at him to do it, _now,_ show him, show him what a slut he really is. Sherlock thrusts his hips in frantic instinct, his every muscle clenching, shaking in panic and arching from his bed in desperation, as the firm nose of the ice slides and burns and nuzzles just beneath the tip of his cock. Everything is breaking; everything's shattering. He wants to shatter with it. He wants to. He needs to. He's breaking. The cold takes flame; it burns its way through him, writhing and coming and coming _and coming..._

 _Good boy,_ the voice croons afterwards, as he lies in a molten mess of himself. His sheets are wet; his body is wet. His hands and his eyes are wet. _Such a good boy._

_Go clean yourself up, mm? Then sleep on those wet sheets all night for me._

_See you in the morning, sweet._

 

* * *

 

When Sherlock finally dares to emerge from his room, he finds John standing by the open window in the early light. He's looking out onto Baker Street. His shirt - a loose and soft grey-blue check - has a crumple to it, and he's enjoying the dawn air on his face. His eyes are closed; he's just breathing.

Sherlock wants to breathe with him.

He wants to breathe very slowly together, somewhere cool, and feel John's fingers trailing cold and insistent across his skin. The night and its sated longings have shaken his usual restraint to its core, and he knows at once he must be careful. Today is a risk day. He's navigated them before - many of them, in the years they've now had together - but he must put the night, and the voice, and the truth from his mind.

Hearing Sherlock on the stairs, John glances around from the window.

His half-smile curls in Sherlock's stomach.

"Morning," he says, lightly. He's eyeing Sherlock as if he knows something - it's the same heavy-lidded look that people are giving each other out on the street.

Sherlock does his best to appear composed, and not to stare at the dishevelled V of chest offered to him by John's shirt. "Good morning."

John's eyes are curiously dark today.

"You were up late," he notes, relaxing back against the window frame. He lifts his coffee to his mouth. "Couldn't sleep?"

Sherlock has the distinct suspicion that John is asking more than he's asking. He suppresses all reaction, still standing just inside the door.

"Along with most of the country, I imagine." He's rather proud of how steady he sounds. "You must have been awake in order to hear me..."

"I wasn't, at first." John visibly bites the side of his tongue. "Sherlock."

Sherlock says nothing.

Part of him already knows. It fills him with a very different kind of cold. It worsens as he realises John _knows_ that he knows. It's why John's eyes are dancing, and why he sips his coffee so slowly.

"You realise sound carries in this house at night, don't you?" John says - and Sherlock's heart crushes itself into nothing at once.

_Oh._

_Oh, God._

He stays still. It seems the only thing to do - freeze.

John takes another sip of coffee, watching him with amusement over the rim of the mug.

"What were you doing?" he asks.

Sherlock's throat contracts. He feels his fingers gather quietly into his palms. "Possibly an obvious deduction..."

"What were you doing _differently?"_ John specifies, the half-smile still playing across his mouth. "You don't usually make that much noise."

_Oh._

_Oh, God._

Sherlock's cheeks flare; he lapses back into frozen silence.

"You're quiet now?" John takes a final drink of coffee, then puts it aside on the windowsill with a clunk. "All this time, and you're finally speechless... what happened to _'oh fuck John, please'?"_

Sherlock shuts his eyes.

He hears John step away from the window - and for a moment, he's sure that John's about to leave. He's going to collect his few things from upstairs, call for a taxi, and that will be it: gone, as soon as he appeared. All this time, Sherlock has kept his inconvenient longings where nobody can see them - _especially_ John - and he's now destroyed it with a single night's indulgence. John, his only friend, is about to leave. It serves him right for his wickedness: uncontent with John's loyal and quiet friendship, craving more, gratifying himself in the night.

Fingers brush his forearm, and slide down to his hand.

When he opens his startled eyes, he finds John giving him a measured look of amusement. He's seen that look before. It always precedes the same pronouncement.

"You're an idiot," John tells him, sure enough.

Sherlock's chest tightens. Their fingers have slipped together; John's hold is loose and intimate at the same time, as if this is quite natural. "I - I don't see - "

John huffs. His mouth curves.

"Of course you don't," he murmurs. "Because you always miss the obvious." His eyes glint. "S'why you've got me. To point out the obvious."

Sherlock can't breathe. He's quite certain his heart has stopped too. He searches John's face, trying to understand, half-aware that their fingers have curled.

"Last night was the first time you've said my name." John pauses, watching him with care. "I couldn't be sure it was me. I - thought it might be. Didn't want to wreck things though, if I was wrong..."

He bites the corner of his lip.

"Why didn't you _say,_ Sherlock? I've... been right here. I've always been right here."

Sherlock doesn't know how to lay that fear out in words. Any precision or clarity makes it unbearable - it's so tragic he can't possibly give voice to it. _Because then you would leave, and I would be alone again._

"I - couldn't believe that you..." His throat grips. "I didn't - realise - "

John's eyes glitter. "What _were_ you doing last night?"

Sherlock's inner thighs ache at once. _"John."_

"So you can't tell me..." John tilts his head, regarding him with the greatest of interest. "How d'you feel about showing me? Is that any easier?"

_"John - "_

"C'mon..." John takes both his hands. He slides their fingers together, and tugs Sherlock backwards towards the door. "Before it gets too hot. We can talk later... I'm done waiting."

 


End file.
